American History

Militias

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="blank"><img a="" alt="Although" armed="" being="" border="0" by="" in="" is="" means="" militias="" no="" novelty="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-HFJTO9sX_yJKntoYxaWOPjiOEGQhi40aBBUOhegvLmYW-dT2WbxbTbwIC9X55hJWEheaeaE5NrzobmNXL33Ai3rxJCKMv8y4mc73v0aRca1JdVsb4HpQ4smJq9fI04wUCWcs_V3CIHmZ/s1600/citizens-militias.jpg" states="" the="" title="Militias" united="" width="470" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">citizens militias</td></tr> </tbody></table> Although being armed in the United States is by no means a novelty, during the early 1990s the collection of marginalized groups that comprised the right-wing “Patriot” community found their ranks swelling as significant numbers of newly disaffected Americans joined “citizens militias” across the United States. Strongest in the rural heartland of the West, Midwest, and South, at its zenith in 1996 the movement had militias active in all fifty states and numbered perhaps as many as 50,000 members, with several millions of supporters and sympathizers. Some militia leaders have claimed total membership figures as high as 10 million, which is frankly far fetched; federal agents have suggested that supporters could number in the millions. Perhaps more realistically, others suggest a total militia membership of between 20,000 and 60,000. <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161655908X/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=72cd926efd34da133c01c73a4daf4a84" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=161655908X&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="Although" armed="" being="" border="0" by="" height="1" in="" is="" means="" militias="" no="" novelty="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=161655908X" states="" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" united="" width="1" /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/089281859X/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=4a2bf5820f9f78ce56fa3b94b6c64927" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=089281859X&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="Although" armed="" being="" border="0" by="" height="1" in="" is="" means="" militias="" no="" novelty="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=089281859X" states="" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" united="" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> Ostensibly defensive in posture, mobilizing in particular against gun laws and as a defiant response to the federal outrages at <a href=" " target="_blank">Ruby Ridge</a> (1992) and at <a href=" " target="_blank">Waco</a> (1993), the militia movement was remarkable and unusual not only for claiming to be socially inclusive, apparently able to recruit African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, and middle-class professionals, but also for utilizing what some have termed “fusion paranoia”—that is, conspiracy theories not just to the right of the political spectrum, but also those incorporating the arguments to the left (Kelly). However, the view that the militia movement was progressive was sharply contradicted by many analysts. One commentator saw the militias as acting as “recruiting pools” for the racist underground, pointing out that the same underground spawned Tim McVeigh, the <a href=" " target="_blank">Oklahoma City bomber</a>. And as early as 1994, the various “watchdog” organizations that monitor the activities of the far right were raising the alarm that racists and antisemites were lurking in the background, disguising their true ideology behind constitutionalist arguments. The “constitutionalist militias” that have since become a permanent feature of the antigovernment movement are united only in terms of their opposition to the “<a href=" " target="_blank">New World Order</a>”—an elitist conspiracy to create a global socialist tyranny. The degree to which racism and antisemitism dominate this coalition is highly questionable, and it is the nature of conspiracy theories that holds the key to understanding the role and significance of the militias. What the Militias Believe Can we really describe the militias as a movement? Arguably, the exercising of gun rights represents only a common strategy among diverse groups (such as survivalists; the advocates of common law who declare themselves “sovereign citizens”; militant antiabortionists; and pro-gun activists), but this does not necessarily represent a common ideology or set of principles. Nonetheless, the term “militia movement” is widely used to refer to those who frame their activity in terms of defending the U.S. Constitution, and who argue that the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights (“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”) is the one that guarantees all the other constitutional rights. The only real issue around which the movement coheres is opposition to gun control, which is seen as a precursor to “tyranny”. “The individual right to bear military arms is a fundamental and undergirding principle of our Republic,” argues a prominent pro-militia journalist, and therefore, he concludes, “upon its removal the entire national government would become an illegitimate tyranny”. The spirit of rebellion against gun laws is summed up in the phrase, “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands,” and it is the symbolic importance of the Second Amendment that guides the militia movement, tied into the ideology of nationalism: “This refusal to submit to tyranny is not simply about firearms. It is about human rights, it is about the rule of law, and it is about the continuance of this great nation”. How can it be that the militias, who present themselves as “Patriots” in defense of U.S. values, are also “antigovernment”? This can only be answered by understanding the politics of nationalism. The FBI’s special report of 1999, Project Megiddo, which discussed the possibility of civil disorder at the start of the new millennium, listed the following criteria as a guideline for what constitutes a militia: “(1) a domestic organization with two or more members; (2) the organization must possess and use firearms; and (3) the organization must conduct or encourage paramilitary training.” Jon Roland, of the pro-militia Constitution Society, argues that this definition is not the one implied in the U.S. Constitution, especially the Second Amendment, and that “the word militia means defense service, and is applicable to any one or more persons engaged in the defense of the community.” Roland cites George Mason, who defined the militia as “the whole people, except for a few public officials,” and he describes the FBI’s mentality in dealing with the militias as “essentially fascist” (Roland). This accusation—that federal employees and “socialist” politicians such as the Clintons are “fascists”—is a very common one in militia propaganda. By leveling this charge at their enemies, militia leaders can claim, sometimes with genuine conviction, to be “antifascist,” thereby effectively preempting those on the left who themselves charge that genuine fascists and antisemites are influential within the militias. The website www.US-militia.org, for instance, describes those states with stringent gun laws as “despicable and fascist,” while also stating, “If you are a racist, NAZI, KKK, aryan national, psycho or any other type of genetic freak; we do not want you. We suggest you go see a psychiatrist or other mental health professional.” Nevertheless, despite this disclamation, the site contains a link to the 7th Missouri Militia—the most openly racist militia site, run by Martin Lindstedt. In a similar vein, a pro-militia group, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, puts forward an argument that gun control has “racist roots” (because blacks in the South have historically been denied the right to gun ownership) and that it is a precursor to “genocide.” Therefore, by opposing gun laws the militias argue that they are preventing the likelihood of genocide being carried out in the United States against any minority. Within this framework gun owners are depicted as a victimized group denied their civil rights in much the same way as nonwhites historically have been denied theirs (www.JPFO.org is one of the most widely linked pro-gun sites from militia sites). This mirrors the strategy of the Christian Right, who have since the 1980s utilized the language of “civil rights” in defense of Christian values, and have employed conspiracy theories concerning “secular humanism”—portrayed as a rival religion to Christianity. Apart from “nationalism,” expressed as the desire to “save America,” there is no guiding ideology behind a movement that generally denies being “antigovernment” at all—militias are merely opposed to “unconstitutional” government, their exponents claim. Widespread agreement exists among militia members only that there exists a plan to impose global tyranny, usually referred to as the New World Order. This is specifically a socialist plan for global domination. Within this plan a central role is played by the United Nations, which, it is claimed, will use foreign troops to disarm the U.S. populace following the enactment of stringent gun-control measures, hence the importance not only of gun ownership, but also of training and drilling in military techniques and marksmanship. The “precipitating factors” that spurred the movement included the passage of the 1993 Brady Bill, which regulated the sale of handguns and restricted ownership to nonfelons; the outlawing of “assault weapons” as part of the Omnibus Crime Bill (1995), passed in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing; the passage of international trade agreements such as the Global Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)</a>, which politicians such as Patrick Buchanan said were causing U.S. jobs to be exported to the Third World; and two events that indicated, from the Christian Patriot perspective, that the federal government had declared war on its people: the botched sieges by federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and then again, more cataclysmically, at Waco, Texas, in 1993. These events were interpreted as proof that the New World Order was nearing completion. A Texan militia commander said of Waco, “We were sleep-walking through life. It was the massacre that woke us all up. When the history of this age is written, that’ll be the shot that rang out around the world and changed everything”. Militia activists are widely characterized as sharing a conspiracist outlook. Core beliefs include: that the New World Order will require the use of concentration camps for Christian resisters; that unmarked black helicopters are being used by the military in preparation for their plans; that foreign troops working for the United Nations will be used to disarm civilians and imprison them; that international road signs are used in the United States in order to assist these foreign troops; that urban street gangs (such as the Bloods and Crips in Los Angeles) will be used as “shock troops” for the New World Order; and that implanted chips are being used to monitor U.S. citizens (a belief shared by Tim McVeigh). The following elite groups are identified as the instigators of the conspiracy: the Skull and Bones secret society, based at Yale University (of which the Bush family are said to be members); the Council on Foreign Relations; the Trilateral Commission (comprising economic, political, and media elites from Western Europe, North America, and Japan); the Bilderbergers; the <a href=" " target="_blank">Rockefeller</a> and Rothschild banking families; and the British royal family. Many of these conspiracy theories are the same as those of the John Birch Society, who label these elites “the Insiders.” Although these elites include Americans, the conspiracy itself is specifically un-American, as pointed out by Bo Gritz, speaking in 1992: “what we see are the tentacles of this elite club.... I think the head, the brain, the guts of this thing probably lies offshore from the United States”. This is a brief summary of some of the more common theories, which not all militia members will believe. Another popular view is the suggestion that <a href=" " target="_blank">UFOs</a> have made contact with human governments and they are colluding with corrupt elites, as advanced by William Cooper in Behold a Pale Horse, a book that is both popular and influential in militia circles (and which takes its title from a line in the Book of Revelation 6: 8). Some conspiracy theories are more mundane, relating to health issues such as fluoride in water supplies, or the belief that high school shootings are caused by giving the drug Ritalin to children. It is belief in conspiracies that informs all resistance from the far right, framed in opposition to the left. Unanimity is not required, merely the identification of common enemies—the enemies of the nation. Militia and Patriot publications and websites also present an economic analysis, in which the Federal Reserve is depicted as a corrupt body, backed by private banking interests, overseeing a monetary system based upon usury and fictitious capital. There is a considerable crossover into the tax protest/resistance constituency of Patriots who believe that the payment of income tax—which was introduced illegally in 1912, it is argued—is actually voluntary and not a compulsory obligation. By refusing to cooperate with the Inland Revenue Service (IRS), Patriots believe that they are striking a blow against the New World Order. By declaring themselves “sovereign citizens” many believe that they can legally evade income tax, so long as they learn “common law” well enough to refute the erroneous arguments of IRS officials in court. Predictably, run-ins with the IRS have resulted in many would-be Patriots becoming incarcerated or fined, as their common law argu- ments have failed to win out in court. Thus “tax resisters” frequently become available for recruitment to the far right, as was the case with Robert Mathews of The Order, for instance. In militia publications and websites, comparisons are commonly made with the situation when America was a British colony, ruled by King George III, which resulted in the American Revolution and the overthrow of colonial rule. This comparison legitimizes resistance against corrupt federal authority, summed up in the oft-repeated quote from Ben Franklin, “They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The vast majority of militia websites and publications, it should be emphasized, express only the utmost loyalty to the U.S. Constitution, which they feel is under threat from traitorous enemies, and they disavow both racism and violence. It is apparent that the militias’ typical stance, being one of rebellion and distrust of mainstream politics and culture, leads many to come into conflict with law enforcement agencies, and the Militia Watchdog website provides a lengthy litany of militia members and leaders who have been arrested and charged with crimes ranging from firearms offenses, tax evasion, and civil disobedience (such as driving without a valid driver’s license), to more serious ones such as conspiracy to blow up federal buildings. In some cases, such as that of the Arizona Viper Militia, the leading protagonists in a conspiracy to make bombs turned out to be undercover federal agents (eleven out of the twelve who were arrested in 1996 eventually received prison sentences). Impact of September 11 Prior to the terrorist attacks of 11 September Mark Pitcavage believed that the militia movement “has certainly declined, but it is not in danger of disappearing, and in fact in many parts of the country it is still very strong. In some parts of the country, where militia arrests laid it low (such as West Virginia and Georgia), it is reforming.” He also mentioned the “reflowering” of the tax protest movement and the growth in popularity of the “redemption” tactic of common law adherents (a type of financial scam), “active in virtually every single state”. Militias were also able to mobilize supporters for lengthy standoffs with law enforcement agencies in both Indiana and Texas during 2000–2001, at the Indianapolis Baptist Church and the Joel Grey farm, respectively. Taking the “antigovernment movement” as a whole, of which the militias are but a part, Pitcavage concluded that it “has existed in more or less its present form since the early 1970s and nobody’s managed to stamp it out yet. I doubt it is dead right now.” However, since 11 September the militias have been somewhat eclipsed by the wave of patriotism that has swept the United States, coupled with the strong support for President Bush and the federal government’s “war on terrorism.” Militia websites have adapted their rhetoric, arguing that terrorism stands alongside socialism, liberalism, and communism as threats to U.S. values and prosperity. The lesson for the gun lobby—the center of gravity for the militias—was that the plane hijackings could have been avoided if air passengers were allowed to carry guns on board flights: “only self defense by the ‘unorganized militia’ will be available when domestic or foreign terrorists choose their next moment of murder. And here is the public-policy implication of this fact: It would be better if the militia were more prepared to act when it is needed”. The passengers who fought against the hijackers on Flight 93, which came down in rural Pennsylvania, it is argued, were effectively acting as a citizens’ militia. Individualized security—the right of the citizen to bear arms and form militias—is held as the ideal, contrasted with any notion of collectivized security arrangements carried out by the state in conjunction with the disarming of civilians, which remains anathema to the Right in the United States. It is clear, however, that militia appeals have lost a degree of salience as a result of 11 September, as there is again an external enemy taking on a similar role to that of international communism during the cold war. As Norm Olson put it, “I don’t want anyone to have the idea that we’re going to bow down to the federal government, but I think this could be a new beginning.... As long as there is a foreign enemy, we will work together with our federal government. George Bush’s enemy is my enemy”. Nevertheless, given the nature of conspiracist thinking, it is clear that many will be resistant to appeals to support the federal government, and will regard 11 September as a planned event, part of the conspiracy—as does the Freedom Fighter Net, linked from the Michigan Militia site: “As Franklin Delano Roosevelt is quoted as saying: ‘Nothing ever happens in international politics that isn’t planned.’ Our leaders may not have a clue what is actually going on here, but these attacks have New World Order and One World Government written all over them.” Hidden Agendas? The pro-militia publication the Patriot Report (run by Christian Identity adherent George Eaton, out of Arkansas) argued that the militias formed in the 1990s as a defensive response to “when the socialist change agents began making offensive moves against the U.S. Constitution and American sovereignty.... the only thing standing in the conspirators’ way of total world conquest,” he continued, “was the few American patriots who still believe in the constitutional American Republic.... It was aggressive and offensive moves by the conspirators for a One World Government that caused the patriot community to recognize tyranny and then to form militias.... The militias are defensive, not offensive or revolutionary”. Nevertheless, “watchdog” organizations, such as the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and some activists argue that the militias harbor hidden agendas and that racists and antisemites have played influential roles in the formation of the militia movement. They further argue that the “Patriots” who make up the bulk of the membership constituted “the seedbed, if not the realization, of a uniquely American kind of fascism”. Morris Dees (of Klanwatch—part of the SPLC that Dees heads) describes John Trochmann, founder of the Militia of Montana, as “a frequent visitor to the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations,” apparently indicating guilt by association. In Dees’s book Gathering Storm: America’s Militia Threat, he links the militias directly with Tim McVeigh (the Oklahoma City bomber), suggesting that the movement “led to the most destructive act of domestic terrorism” in U.S. history up until that point. Dees stated in a letter to the then U.S. attorney general, Janet Reno: “Our office has confirmed the active involvement of a number of well-known white supremacists, Posse Comitatus, Christian Identity, and other extremist leaders and groups in the growing militia movement”. These included established far-right leaders such as Louis Beam (ex–Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon), Bo Gritz (“a notorious antisemite”), and James Wickstrom (a Posse Comitatus leader). In making the case for the involvement of far-right activists, Dees is not alone in ascribing a meeting that took place in October 1992 at Estes Park, Colorado, as a sort of planning meeting for the formation of the militias. Known as the “Rocky Mountain Rendezvous,” it brought together over 150 far-right leaders, including Richard Butler of Aryan Nations, Red Beckman of the Fully Informed Jury Association, and Larry Pratt, founder of Gun Owners of America, who represented the militant wing of the pro-gun lobby. The event, which was organized by Pete Peters largely in response to the Ruby Ridge siege that had taken place earlier in the year, featured a keynote speech by Louis Beam in which he outlined the “leaderless resistance” strategy, based upon cellular, decentralized structures apparently similar to those employed by the “Committees of Correspondence” during the American Revolution. In the article of the same name that explains “Leaderless Resistance,” originally written in 1983, Beam advocates various ways in which “those who love our race, culture, and heritage” can resist “federal tyranny,” which he regards as having replaced the threat of communism in the United States. Strategies include utilizing “camouflage,” by which Beam means “the ability to blend in the public’s eye the more committed groups of resistance with mainstream ‘kosher’ associations that are generally seen as harmless.” In other words, racists should involve themselves in groups through being disingenuous about their true ideology. With this in mind, it is clear that it would be impossible to prove that racists and antisemites are dominant within the militias, but at the same time it is a fair assumption that there are at least some present. Nevertheless, the role of racists should not be overstated. Mark Pitcavage believes that Estes Park was not particularly relevant to the development of the militia movement and that “most militia leaders never even heard of it.” Representatives of both the SPLC and ADL are agreed that the militia movement is not mainly characterized by racism. Martin Durham argues, “Rather than see Estes Park as the origin of the modern militias it would seem more useful to see it as one of many Patriot initiatives that anticipated, but only in some cases influenced, the emergence of a new wave of paramilitary groups in 1994”. He concludes that far more emphasis should be given to the role of the militant pro-gun lobby, including the National Rifle Association, but more significantly a rival group, the Gun Owners of America (headed by Larry Pratt). For some, it is the belief in conspiracy theories that is regarded as proof enough that the militias harbor racist sentiments: “This current crop of conspiracy theories is written on a template forged long ago and reshaped by successive tales of secret worldwide conspiracies”. The argument is that the above theories can be traced back to antisemitic conspiracy theories, based on the model of Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged account of Jewish plans for global domination. But this is to overlook the overwhelming religiosity of the movement. Other commentators have drawn attention to what they see as the leading role of Christian “reconstructionists” and antiabortion radicals (often with links to white-supremacist theologies). But there is far more consensus that it was Pat Robertson’s 1991 bestseller, The New World Order, that did most to pave the way for the militias. It both popularized and brought together secular and religious conspiracy theories in a single overarching analysis that labeled the conspirators as motivated by absolute evil (McLemee). Robertson specifically rules out blaming “monopoly capitalism” for the problems of the world—there is “some other power at work.” He identifies the “policy elites” who are attempting to dominate the world and concludes that such impulses spring “from the depth of something that is evil, neither well intentioned nor benevolent”. There is no overt racism or antisemitism in the book, however, although Robertson took considerable flak for his decision to utilize antisemitic sources—he included references to both Eustace Mullins and Nesta Webster, for example. Rather than demonizing the militias as racist conspiracies guided by antisemitism, Mark Fenster argues that they are better understood if the important modern role of “popular eschatology” is emphasized: that is, the practice of reading and interpreting both history and contemporary events as the signs foretold in the Bible, mediated to a mass market of Christians (hence popular eschatology). The Book of Revelation is particularly significant, speaking of “fire and smoke and brimstone”; the number of the Beast (666); the four horsemen of the Apocalypse; the violent destruction of Babylon and the slaying of a third of the human population; the hour of judgment; Armageddon; and so on. Rather than preparing for a race war, Fenster feels that militia members are more likely to be preparing to fight it out with the Antichrist, assisting the forces of Christ in the simpulan showdown at Armageddon. Popular eschatology is based upon a “mechanistic theory of power ... [which] echoes, and at times explicitly borrows, the theories of more secular right-wing conspiracy theories,” but they are not the same thing. Although the lines between religious and secular conspiracy theories are blurred, “they each emerge from distinct, if at times overlapping, social and cultural contexts” (Fenster, 147). It is, therefore, the difference between conservative Protestantism on the one hand, and modernist/liberal Protestantism on the other, that holds the key to understanding popular eschatology, which is deeply traditionalist and pious. The militias represent the backlash politics of conservative Protestantism, reacting against the domination of “secular humanism” and the (immoral) liberal consensus that prevails in contemporary America. There are concerns that militias function as “bridges,” facilitating the movement of Christian conservatives toward the far right, as they encounter the secular conspiracy theories of the Christian Right and the John Birch Society, whose tracts are widely available on militia sites, and then become susceptible to the more dangerous extremism of antisemites, whose sites are far less frequently linked (Barkun). Similarly, Ken Stern (107) uses the notion of “funnels” to describe the way that the movement takes people in over concerns over a wide range of issues, such as gun control and environmental restrictions, and then when they get to the extremist core of the funnel they emerge as antisemites, as did Tim McVeigh. Militias also represent very real economic interests, such as gun manufacturers who use patriotism to boost sales and who promote gun ownership as the antidote to individual insecurity; anti-environmentalists who support the rights of loggers and mining interests over the efforts by Greens to restrict the use of natural resources and to protect wildernesses; and free market libertarians whose main concern is with maintaining a vibrant culture of antitax militancy and antigovernmentalism. These diverse interests express no support for racism or antisemitism, but because they employ the myths of nationalism and have a dialectical relationship with the same caricatured versions of their ideological enemies—liberalism and socialism—then they also have to contend with the racists in their midst who regard the nation as an ethnically based entity (belonging to white Europeans) rather than a values-based one (of which all immigrants can become a part). As far as militias are concerned, it is the political Left that has the hidden jadwal (the eventual creation of communism), which will result in the enslavement of all nations. The militias are ideologically “slippery,” and therefore able to recruit beyond the traditional “Christian Patriot” base of support, precisely because they have no need to be open and unambiguous about what they really believe in. They represent symbolic resistance to globalization, multiculturalism, and state power, often reflecting cultural chauvinism, but for every racist militia there is at least one libertarian one. They are a cause for concern for law enforcement agencies because, as Mark Pitcavage puts it, “they have the tools for violence coupled with an ideology in which violence is not only permissible but if used for the right ends, admirable.” By refusing to specify what the ultimate ends might be they are hoping to move beyond the fringes and into the mainstream.

Militias

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Millenarianism

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Millenarianism Millenarianism in the United States has often been associated with a conspiratorial outlook. Narrowly defined, millenari...

Millerites

Millerites

Millerites Emerging during the Second Great Awakening , the Millerites were followers of the millenarian teachings of a self-made preac...

Mind Control

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDg5emtXJru7f8b4ikI1tMrib73R9bECLnSMl6wn6Qa1aaH0Kl1RGpC05FmOknabqeUExmzS3GSEhc0gCdqtUHrPUyqErYzY6B0WLrYtTrJTgPkewNlJZjSg3j7utifQMu3pBamdwVmEg7/s1600/mindcontrol.jpg" width="250" /></a></div> Although paranoia has usually been seen as the most important aspect of conspiracy theory in terms of subjectivity and psychology, mind-control conspiracies contribute in significant and complex ways to fears around the control of the individual at the hands of a hostile government or conspiracy group. All conspiracy theories are based on a notion of mind control anyway, simply because they are based on a belief that a conspiracy is attempting to control people’s beliefs and actions. The term “sheeple,” used derogatorily by conspiracy theorists to describe those who believe official government (dis)information, implies aspects of propaganda, brainwashing, and control of people’s thoughts. Such a term is based on a binary opposition of “us” and “them” that dominates paranoid discourses of conspiracy where there is, on the one hand, an elite group that is on the inside of power and who have true knowledge of how reality functions while, on the other, there is the “mass” who are on the outside of power and who only have access to reality through the lies and disinformation disseminated by the elite. Mind control conspiracies have this structure at their base, but problematize the notion of “inside” and “outside.” The paranoid individual in conspiracy theory is relatively free from the control of the conspiracy (because she “recognizes” its existence and is therefore able to detach him- or herself from it), creating an objective and meaningful individuality in opposition to the brainwashed “sheeple.” <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1500263885/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1500263885&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=MBRJO5CKBU44NN4X"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1500263885&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Although" as="" aspect="" been="" border="0" conspiracy="" control="" has="" height="1" important="" mind="" most="" of="" paranoia="" seen="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1500263885" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" theory="" usually="" width="1" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671739891/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0671739891&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=G7IZKC6L2FR7TLSF"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0671739891&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Although" as="" aspect="" been="" border="0" conspiracy="" control="" has="" height="1" important="" mind="" most="" of="" paranoia="" seen="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0671739891" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" theory="" usually="" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> Mind-control conspiracies have a more complex position with regard to the notion of identity and the construction of the conspiracy that controls its victims, because the mind-control subject has an ambiguous status as to whether s/he is inside or outside the conspiracy. On the one hand, they are “inside” because they are doing the work of the conspiracy group as a result of their conditioning, programming, or physical implant, but on the other hand, they are “outside” because they are doing so unwittingly as part of a conspiracy where they are a key element, but have no control over their actions. Hence, many important conspiracy figures, such as <a href=" " target="_blank">Lee Harvey Oswald</a>, Sirhan Sirhan, and Timothy McVeigh are presented in conspiracy theory in radically different ways, either as knowing participants within a larger conspiracy or as mind-controlled “patsies” who were used without their own knowledge. Mind control is therefore not easily understood as a conspiracy itself, because it does not have a recognizable goal other than to ease the way for a larger conspiracy group. As such, it is more a “sign” that a conspiracy is at work in society, although in the works of Jim Keith, a seminal mind-control conspiracist, it has been imagined as the key form of social control for groups such as the Nazis and the <a href=" " target="_blank">New World Order</a>. Anxieties and Concerns of Mind Control The problematic nature of mind control, not least in the question of whether it actually exists as a real practice or as a meaningful psychological condition, despite the documented evidence of the CIA’s <a href=" " target="_blank">MK-ULTRA</a> program, leads to many issues that not only focus around identity but also around the body, reality, and knowledge. Mind-control conspiracies can be understood in terms of six key anxieties or cultural concerns: <ul> <li>The death of the self</li> <li>The death of reality</li> <li>The “soulless” body</li> <li>The death of the human</li> <li>Technophobia</li> <li>The end of “knowledge”</li> </ul> The death of the self revolves around the question of whether mind-control subjects (should such people exist) act according to their own desire or whether they are tools in someone else’s hands. The opposition can be seen in terms of a split between the conscious self-willed individual and the unconsciously driven puppet. However, because conspiracy does not control the subject from outside, but from within his or her consciousness (either through hypnosis, brainwashing and behavioral modification, drugs, or implants), such an opposition becomes problematic. The conspiracy is both inside and outside the self at the same time, with the result that mind-control victims are never sure whether their thoughts and desires are their own or someone else’s. Such a situation maps a cultural concern over the stability of the self that can be aligned with modern and postmodern concerns over consciousness and the question of how far identity is constructed within consciousness and how far it is a product of external reality systems such as the circulation of information and images in society or the operations of cultural ideology. Related to this is the concern over the “death of reality.” If reality cannot be observed objectively as an empirical fact and then guaranteed by the sense-perceptions of the individual (because it is unclear whether it is a product of cognitive experience or created by a program, an implant, or a conditioning process generated by mind control) then it becomes an unknowable and uncertain <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=Mind Control>phenomenon</a>. Such a concern plays out twentieth-century anxieties over the nature of reality, but also revisits older philosophical debates between empiricism and metaphysics about what exists and how we come to know it (ontology and epistemology, respectively), but from a paranoid perspective. Where empiricism tends to believe in a reality that is knowable only through observation (arguably a paranoid perspective in itself), metaphysics assumes that knowledge of reality is pre-given (usually in form of the soul) where observation simply confirms what is already intuitively known. Mind-control conspiracies reenact such a belief in a secular form, within which the soul is replaced by a material (and often industrial) agent such as a jadwal or an implant, that has a malign, rather than a benign, influence, not only because it displaces free will, but also because it displaces God. When considering such a position, it is unsurprising that many contemporary mind-control conspiracy theorists, such as Texe Marrs or Ron Patton, have a fundamentalist Christian outlook. The former sees mind control in the operation of “Project L.U.C.I.D.” which he claims is a far-reaching conspiracy to control all individuals through invasive technologies, while the latter concocts an occult and satanic conspiracy behind the mythical Nazi/CIA mind-control jadwal “Project Monarch.” What both articulate in their conspiracies is a fear of the soulless body, a dominant feature of many mind-control narratives, which see the self-willed body replaced by one that simply follows a program. Many recent conspiracy theories have made connections with mind control in order to envisage a society where people are simply bodies or pieces of meat. Conspiracy theories that focus on alien experimentation on humans or the use of implants by governments represent an anxiety that the human body is just a thing or a functional unit (for example, in remote viewing conspiracies, where a person simply becomes a pair of eyes designed to observe and transmit data). Related to such concerns are notions of the death of the human, something that is most obvious in those UFO narratives that focus on the probing of the human body and its modification for use by aliens. In such conspiracies, the human body is altered so that it no longer operates by human desires, feelings, or thoughts, but as an alien body by proxy (controlled by an alien mind), performing “inhuman” activities by unknowingly conspiring against the human species. An extension of such concerns can also be found in mind-control narratives that have their basis in governmental conspiracies, as for example in the stories Cathy O’Brien tells of her experiences as a CIA sex slave, during which George Bush, Sr., is said to have transformed into a lizard alien in front of her, an imaginative trope that is designed to show the inhumanity of mind control. The development of telemetric implants and fictionalizations of cyborg technology on film have also led to a concern with the death of the human, but this time at the hands of technology. In both alien and technological mind-control conspiracies, there is an anxiety that humans are becoming less than human and more like Descartes’s “animal-machine,” which is governed by its instinct (or program) rather than by rationality and thought. There is also a related concern that the mind and body have become separated because the body is simply a soulless piece of meat whose “mind” exists externally in the mind of its human, cybernetic, or alien controller. Telemetric implant and cyborg mind-control narratives represent such a process by reference to the transformation of the human into the machine and articulate a pervasive technophobia or fear of science that can be seen in many other mind-control conspiracies, whether this control occurs through hypnotism (with its connections to mesmerism), Pavlovian conditioning, electroshock therapy, the use of laboratory-created <a href=" " target="_blank">LSD</a>, or through the introduction of literal implants, such as the “stimoceiver” (see below), into the human body. Finally, mind-control conspiracies can be seen to articulate a very postmodern concern with the end of knowledge. The fact that mind-control victims do not know whether their thoughts are their own or those of another, transmitted to them through conditioning, programming, or the telemetric transmission of signals, highlights a concern that <a href=" " target="_blank" title=Mind Control>information</a> is no longer knowable as an objectively verifiable truth. Knowledge has become untrustworthy, partly because the individual is unable to legitimate knowledge any more but primarily because the information received is either strategic (where the mind-control puppet only has a version of truth that will enable him or her to carry out the task, as with Sirhan Sirhan, according to Alex Constantine) or is composed of disinformation, designed to mislead the mind-control victim into believing that reality is other than it actually is. The Origins of Mind-Control Conspiracies Although the above ideas suggest that mind control is paradigmatic of postmodern conspiracy theory (because of the radical unknowability it creates with regard to every aspect of contemporary culture), mind control has its origins in industrial modernity. As with many conspiracy theories, the genealogy of mind control takes in both fiction and history, albeit an invented alternative history where scientific experimentation is rewritten as a secret cabalistic plan that involves human torture and social engineering on a large scale. In some respects, such a portrayal can be said to be accurate when applied, for example, to the Victorian practice of lobotomizing female inmates of mental institutions, which entailed an obvious and destructive form of mind control. However, most conspiracy discourses on mind control in the period of modernity are characterized by a paranoid anxiety over scientific inquiry, notably in the writings of Jim Keith. In several texts, Keith has traced a history of mind control that incorporates early experiments with hypnotism, eugenics, Freudian and Jungian psychiatry, behavioral psychology, and John Dewey’s educational theories, that when imaginatively linked, by Keith, to governmental intelligence agencies through key figures such as Cecil Rhodes, H. G. Wells, and Aldous Huxley generates early signs of what was to become the New World Order. Such a history is typical of mind-control conspiracies and many of the same figures or ideas constantly recur. The eighteenth-century Austrian physician Friedrich Anton Mesmer, for example, is given a key role in early mind-control narratives because “mesmerism,” which was actually the application of magnetism to animal or human bodies, has become synonymous with hypnotism in popular and conspiracy consciousness as a result of the belief that the use of magnetic induction creates involuntary bodily movements that suggest control of the mind. Other important figures in the genealogy of mind control are Sigmund Freud and the behaviorists B. F. Skinner and I. P. Pavlov. The latter is central to mind-control conspiracies because his experiments to induce dogs to salivate at the sounding of a bell (which indicated that food was on its way) have become a paradigm for anxieties over the possibility of a similar conditioning being applied to human beings. Although the origins of mind control can be found in a reinvented history of psychological and medical science, there are also elements that are based solely on fiction. George du Maurier’s novel of 1894, Trilby, with its representation of the figure of Svengali, introduces one of the first images of a puppet-master controlling his protegé, Trilby, by means of hypnotism and mesmeric induction. The omnipotent master controlling a slave in this way has become one of the dominant images of contemporary mind-control narratives and finds form, for example, in conspiracies surrounding Project Monarch and CIA sex slave stories. Another fictional influence of mind-control conspiracies can be found in cinematic representations where the concern over the robotic or zombielike nature of mind-control victims indicates how far mind-control conspiracies are a product of science fiction and horror film. The unthinking robot, controlled by its program, or the zombie of 1930s Hollywood cinema, who is given an order that it slavishly obeys, are dominant figurations of the mind-controlled puppet who similarly has no mind of his or her own. Specifically, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) has a significant place in forming the discourses of mind control. It has an omnipotent controller in the Svengali mould, in the figure of Rottwang, whose representation as a “mad scientist” has been applied in conspiracy theory to historical figures such as Sidney Gottlieb and Ewen Cameron of the MK-ULTRA jadwal and to John B. Watson, who attempted to apply Pavlov’s experiments to humans. The most important facet of mind control in the film, however, is Rottwang’s creation of a robot that can be controlled and its subsequent use as a replacement for the rebel heroine, Maria, a substitution of the human by the machine that acts as a displaced figuration of the mind-controlled victim. A further aspect of the film that is of note for mind control is the depiction of the worker-slaves, who are presented as no different from the robot Rottwang creates because they are already programmed to act and work in a regimented fashion. These influences suggest that mind-control conspiracy theories have their origin in anxieties over the development of industrialization and its concomitant technologization of society in the period of modernity. The two main cultural forces that mind-control conspiracies respond to are the rationalization of industrial production and social <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title=Mind Control>organization</a>, and the development of a mass culture. These are concerns that are articulated by Metropolis, for example, and that are extended in the contemporary societies of advanced economies (and most particularly, in the United States) in the hyper-rationalization and bureaucratization of everyday life (by governments and, increasingly, corporations) and in the extension of mass production to mass consumption. Fear of rationalization is not confined to mind-control conspiracies and, indeed, can be seen to be a staple of any conspiracy theory’s fear of a hidden system controlling everyday life, but one feature that is specific to mind control is the identification of the Nazis as key players in the creation of postwar projects such as Project Monarch (as Patton claims) or the influential role their eugenic experiments and propaganda techniques have apparently had on areas as diverse as MK-ULTRA’s claimed involvement in social engineering or on the development of <a href=" " target="_blank" title=Mind Control>subliminal advertising</a>. The Nazis, as proponents of a totalitarian form of rationalized social control and as architects of a mass culture based on propaganda, become the nightmare of modernity that generates much mind-control conspiracy theory. They are also one of the reasons why eugenics is frequently mentioned in relation to mind control, although this is also part of a more general distrust of science that characterizes mind-control theories. The location of the origins of mind control in modernity can thus be seen in the fears of rationalization generated by the creation of many national and global institutions in this period, as well as by a fear of the “mass” that accompanies processes of industrial production, particularly as these are applied to society in Nazi ideology. Such concerns can be identified in mind-control conspiracies’ anxieties over the mass programming of individuals in contemporary society as part of a wider attempt to control society by a conspiracy group. Mind control thus represents not a conspiracy in itself but constitutes, for conspiracy theorists, a symptom of larger conspiratorial projects based on anxieties over social and cultural structures that developed at the beginning of the twentieth century and that have been extended into contemporary culture. The Mass Media and Subliminal Advertising One of the first mind-control conspiracy theories of the postwar period is related to this general sense of a secret manipulation of consciousness as a sign of some unknown conspiracy at work in society. Fears over the mass media and its apparent brain-washing of the U.S. public were a pervasive anxiety in the 1950s when the development of television in conjunction with a culture of consumerism and visual advertising led to an unease over the application of mass and rationalized structures to the social scene. Such anxieties had already been raised by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in their Marxist analysis of media institutions such as the Hollywood studio system and national radio in the United States of the 1940s, which, while predominantly a discussion of the operations of ideology in society, can be seen as a paranoid response to mass culture in their concerns with the way citizens’ active involvement in social relations is replaced by a more passive reception of social and cultural values and beliefs. The concern over the influence of television and the mass media that developed in the 1950s, as detailed by Marling, follows such a structure, but stems from a liberal intellectual concern over the “dumbing down” of society. A more particular example of mass-media mind control can be found in one of the founding mind-control texts, Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders, published in 1957. Here, Packard drew attention to the practices used by the advertising industry to influence consumers in their choice of products, implying a form of mind control in the process, but he also mentioned experiments with subliminal advertising. During the 1950s an advertising executive, James Vicary, allegedly developed subliminal advertising when he flashed the words “Eat Popcorn” and “Drink Coke” onto a cinema screen over the course of a six-week experiment. He claimed that there had been a large rise in sales of these products as a result of his campaign, claims that led to popular fears about subliminal advertising, their investigation by the Federal Communications Commission, and their banning in Britain and Australia. Subliminal advertising has had a significant impact on conspiracy theory’s distrust of official media institutions as a result of such claims, despite the fact that Vicary later admitted that he had fabricated his findings. As a consequence, fears about subliminal messages on television have continued to have currency in a variety of ways, as Dan Kelly notes, in his discussion of Wilson Bryan Key’s allegations that the mass media is corrupting society by inserting images of sex and death into its televisual programming. Similarly, Texe Marrs’s claims about the development of a cyber-conspiracy involving the tracking of individuals through their purchases aligns itself with a fear of the practices of the mass media, in its corporate forms, and grows out of this early subliminal-advertising conspiracy theory. More specifically, the acceptance of subliminal transmissions has also led to the conspiracy belief that media institutions are an extension of governmental forces or a manifestation of larger conspiracies because of the implication of brainwashing that this alleged practice entails. Such a belief is argued by Alex Constantine, who claims that a secret governmental project called Operation Mockingbird was created in order to use television as a propaganda medium. He goes further than this, however, and also alleges that there was another program, called Operation Octopus, begun in 1948, that was a surveillance project designed to turn televisions into transmitters that would, in Big Brother fashion, send images or messages to and from people’s living rooms. CIA Mind Control: MK-ULTRA, and Manchurian Candidates At the same time that subliminal advertising was allegedly brainwashing the consumers of the United States, an actual mind-control jadwal was in operation, run by the CIA and military intelligence under a variety of code names (Projects Chatter, Bluebird, and Artichoke) but which in 1953 developed into an umbrella project called MK-ULTRA. Documented evidence of these mind-control experiments became more widely known following governmental investigations in the 1970s, which revealed that MK-ULTRA, under the control of Sidney Gottlieb, had engaged in 149 projects and sub-projects between 1953 and 1963 and had investigated a wide range of areas including the use of electroshock, sensory deprivation, hypnotism, radiation, and drugs such as LSD in order to effect behavioral modifications in the tested subjects. Many of these experiments were carried out on CIA and other governmental employees, but there were also LSD projects that involved tests on unwitting subjects either within the military (such as Frank Olsen, who committed suicide after a psychotic trauma, possibly as a result of having been given LSD without his knowledge), in hospitals or, in one case, a prison for people convicted of drugs offenses. Although MK-ULTRA dealt with many areas of mind control, it is the development and testing of LSD that has attracted the most attention because, in the form of Operation Midnight Climax, it was taken out of governmental institutions and applied to the general American public. In this phase, members of the public were tested in apartments in New York and San Francisco, while their responses were filmed or recorded through two-way mirrors. MK-ULTRA has probably had the most impact on mind-control conspiracy theory because it provides substantiated evidence for government involvement in attempts to control people’s behavior. What began as a response to military concerns that the Soviet Union and China had developed truth drugs and brainwashing techniques has become, in conspiracy theory, part of a large-scale attempt by the government or other groups, such as the New World Order, to exercise domination through social engineering. For conspiracy theorists, the government argument that MK-ULTRA was a response to Soviet brainwashing during the Korean War is a cover to conceal the reality of the program: the use of mind control against U.S. citizens. Alex Constantine, for example, dates the start of Project Mockingbird, the government/media conspiracy to control people’s minds through propaganda, to 1963 in order to signal that the end of the internal MK-ULTRA experiments was only the beginning of their real purpose, which was their external application to the people of the United States. MK-ULTRA has also spawned “Manchurian Candidate” conspiracies, which have their origin in John Marks’s The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. Marks’s book is predominantly an account of the LSD experiments of MK-ULTRA, but includes many oft-quoted chapters toward the end on the work of Dr. Ewen Cameron in Montreal and on CIA hypnosis programs that apparently dealt with the question of whether it would be possible to jadwal a human being in the first instance and then whether an individual could be programmed to be a mind-controlled assassin. This hypothesis has gained much popularity in conspiracy theory, particularly in relation to the assassinations or attempted assassinations of political figures or celebrities since the 1960s. It has variously been claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, Mark Chapman, and John Hinckley were all in some way programmed to perform deeds that they would otherwise be incapable of as conscious human beings, but which they could perform if they were hypnotized by governmental or conspiracy groups (Oswald and Sirhan) or brainwashed by a conspiracy-controlled media (Chapman and Hinckley). The latter position has become increasingly evident recently, with claims that the Columbine killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were indoctrinated to act as “Manchurian Candidates” by a media culture that will produce more of the same, a conspiracy theory that, like Constantine’s Operation Mockingbird, sees the successful extension of CIA mind control into a jadwal of social engineering on a national scale. Project Monarch and CIA Sex Slaves Project Mockingbird is only one of several mind-control programs that has been imagined as a result of revelations about MK-ULTRA. One of the most significant of these other mind-control conspiracies is Project Monarch, which originates with Cathy O’Brien’s book about her experiences as a CIA mind-controlled sex slave, Trance Formation of America. O’Brien relates how she was programmed under Project Monarch, by use of the creation of a multiple personality disorder, hypnosis, and the use of visual and auditory stimuli (such as Disney films) as well as occult training, to generate an alternative personality that is able to perform degrading acts at the will of a controller. Such a conspiracy theory highlights the notion of the death of the human that inheres within mind-control conspiracies, in that O’Brien develops a personality that can be triggered so that it will perform “inhuman” acts that her real human self could not contemplate. Similar stories have been offered by Candy Jones, who, like O’Brien, makes much of the her sensational revelations about sex with political figures and with celebrities. Although even many conspiracy theorists (such as Keith) are skeptical of the sensational aspects of O’Brien’s story, many of her “revelations” about mind control in Project Monarch have entered conspiracy culture. As a result of her book, belief in satanic and occult practices as well as allegations of child abuse often accompany contemporary stories about Project Monarch, associations that, like the earlier linking of eugenics with mind control, are designed to demonstrate how unnatural and inhuman a process it is to divorce someone from his or her real identity by creating a substitute personality that can be triggered at will. It is the Project Monarch conspiracy theory that has done much to spawn the notion of the mind-controlled puppet, and its use of programs and “trigger” devices has become widely accepted as real processes in the practice of mind control. Project Monarch conspiracy theories also list in detail the code-names and levels of mind-controlled subjects that the CIA has operating for it: <ul> <li>Alpha, which is general programming</li> <li>Beta, sex-slave programming</li> <li>Gamma, programming to allow the subject to deceive and misdirect</li> <li>Theta, psychic programming designed to create assassins</li> <li>Omega, a self-destruct programming</li> </ul> Although these are alleged CIA designations, the types of programming they create have also been applied beyond Project Monarch in areas such as cult brainwashing, although figures such as Keith and Patton both suggest connections between Project Monarch and religious cults; in the case of the former by tracing Jim Jones’s apparent links to the CIA, and in the case of the latter by a more general association of cult and occult. In these forms, Project Monarch has become an all-purpose “umbrella” conspiracy that can be applied to any group that is suspected of using mind-control techniques. What such a view also indicates is that, unlike other mind-control conspiracy theories, Project Monarch is no longer simply a functional way of getting people to do a conspiracy’s bidding or even a sign of a conspiracy at work, but has become a conspiracy in itself with its own objectives, operations, and connections with other conspiracy groups, such as the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, or the New World Order.